Snow and cold weather continue to hang on here in NE TN, but I’m still enjoying the slower, quieter pace of life it brings. I’m one of the lucky folks that ‘never gets bored’. Add to that the fact that I’m retired and don’t have to get out and fight the weather conditions unless I really want to, and I’m one of perhaps three other people in this corner of the state that’s okay with it. The forecast for tomorrow is much nicer, and by next weekend when I leave for my trip, it’s gonna be beautiful! We plan to use this weekend to finally get our greenhouse set up with a workbench and shelves so we can transplant our tender seedlings into bigger pots as they too wait for warmer weather to go into the garden.

All that is to say that it’s pretty darn easy to not spend money when you don’t get out much. We did stop in Aldi’s twice this week though while we were out and about, and BOTH times found carts that had been left out of the quarter-returning-cart-corral. We put those ‘found’ quarters in each of our vehicles so we’ll always have one available for our own cart, regardless of which we’re driving at the time. Savings: 50 cents. Remember folks, I grew up with parents who were both children of the depression and for better or for worse, their lessons about money and frugality have stuck with me. “A penny saved is a penny earned” and all that… anyway, this week we found opportunities each and every day to remain true to our values. Frugality is a lifestyle for us, just like partying might be for others, or meditation is for monks. Our chosen lifestyle allowed us the financial freedom for me to have retired in my late 40’s and Michael in his mid-50’s, to have no debt whatsover now, and to have choices that we’d never have otherwise. I write about it here because I’m so enamored of it, I want others to experience it as well. I honestly hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoy finding quarters in the Aldi’s parking lot.

Monday: We delivered posters for the local university’s ‘School of the Arts’ because we feel it’s a great way to support their work here locally, and of course, because we can sometimes earn tickets to attend events we might not otherwise get to see. Last week’s live play and next month’s Ricky Skaggs concert are plenty of incentive to drive around on cold days to do this. While wewere out, we stopped in the new “Spice World” store; they carry Indian foods and spices that you won’t find other places and are very reasonable in price too. While there, Michael picked up a large bunch of cilantro for only 50 cents! (there’s that 50 cents again folks-no amount is too small, it all adds up) We’ve enjoyed several meals this week planned around that sudden windfall and shared them with a hungry young couple that is struggling to make ends meet. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I was struggling financially too.

Tuesday: I had ordered a 25% off book and it arrived in a manila mailer. This time, there were $1.20 worth of stamps on it that had not been canceled out by the post office sorting machinery.If you found $1.20 on the ground, would you leave it there? How about 50 cents?

Wednesday: Yet another cold, snowy day. When life gives you snow, make stock! I’ve written about this process several times so I won’t bore you again but it’s the ultimate money-saving strategy if you’re cooking lots of your meals from scratch, and if you save the onion, celery, carrot trimmings and mushroom stems in the freezer that you’ll surely accumulate from that way of cooking. Then, if you use reusable canning lids, this great-tasting and healthy stock costs pennies per quart for a few peppercorns, bay leaves and dried herbs. In addition to the 8 quarts it made, I saved about $24 over the price of store bought organic broth for those quarts, AND I got this free print called “When Life Gives You Snow…”.

Thursday: I don’t know about you, but we always seem to have paper that fits our printer that has only been printed on one side. Because most of what I print are recipes, music lyrics or other ‘unimportant’ stuff, we’ve gotten in the grand habit of keeping already-used-once-paper in the hopper. Reusing barely-used sheets of paper for this kind of printing has greatly reduced our need for buying reams of new paper, saving money, trees and more!

Friday: Another trip to Aldi’s this morning, to purchase on-sale popcorn, yielded the second quarter find. When we’d shopped there last week with our last $10-off coupon, they didn’t have anything but the microwavable kind. That stuff is 20x the price of the bags of kernels, produces a lot of extra wrapping that can’t be recycled and contains a nasty chemical that’s implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. (My mother died of that horrible disease so it’s a ‘no brainer’ (pun intended) for me to pop my own) On our way OUT of the store last Friday, we picked up a flyer for this week’s sales. The very popcorn I wanted is on sale this week. So tonight I’ll enjoy some freshly popped corn and sip on some organic apple juice, also bought on sale, while watching this week’s epidsode of Downton Abbey on Netflix. I’ll admit, I’m a cheep date and even sing about it with friends from Thistle Dew on this CD!

I’m happy to say I’ve influenced Michael over the years too. He has learned to mark his calendar a week before our on-going 6 month Sirius radio agreement expires, and then calls to cancel it before our credit card gets dinged for another 6 months. Come May, the new car we bought will be 2 years old, and it came with this satellite radio wonder installed free for the first 3 months. We fell in love with it, but when it was time to renew, they wanted some crazy amount each month for it so we called to discontinue it then and were offered increasingly lower offers until they came down to the price we were willing to pay to keep it, which is $5 a month. Almost two years later, we’re still paying that price. When he called to discontinue the service today, the first offer was $89 for the next 6 months. After 3 increasingly lower offers, the operator met our same old price of $5. I’ll be traveling next weekend and will truly enjoy having that along the way. Savings: $64.00!

I hope you won’t let opportunities to save slip by you. Learn to recognize ‘wants’ from ‘needs’ and that will eliminate a lot of unnecessary expenses in your life. Sirius radio is NOT a need, but a nice luxury that is now affordable with just a bit of gentle haggling. You can’t haggle at retail outlets on the things you do need, but by watching for sales, stocking up to take best advantage of them, and by reusing, repurposing, and refusing what you don’t really need, you can win the money game too! Who knows? You may find two quarters to rub together!

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Retirement is so great, the way you can decide how bad you want to go anywhere when it’s so cold, or not, cos tomorrow is another day. You’re going on a trip; I hope it will be a great time for you. He’s a good haggler with that Sirius deal! Have a good weekend.

Well Nancy to be honest, there really wasn’t much haggling involved…you just keep telling them politely ‘no’ it’s more than you want to pay, and they just jump in with their next lowest offer! With Sirius, it doesn’t cost them one extra cent I don’t think to add a customer to their satellite hookup. And we pay for 6 months at a time, on the phone via credit card, so they don’t even have to mail us a bill. I guess they figure $5 a month is better than $0 dollars a month haha And yeah, retirement rocks! I can plan things at my leisure, rather than the time clock. Hope you’re feeling better!

Started PT today and got exercises I need to do 3x a day at home. I was warned that PT hurts and is not fun, yea, that’s true. But it is what it is and we need to get the shoulder moving, so I’ll do what I need to do. I’m so glad I’m retired for all of this!

We needed milk and eggs
So I went to Aldi’s. Eggs – 99 cents a doz. Milk -2.84 gal. This morning around 9
And found center cut pork chops 3.00 off, and a family pack of ground beef 5.00 off. The best find was boneless, skinless chicken beast misspriced @ 1.79 a lb instead of 2.79.